Marketers have significantly less time for their primary job duties compared to non-marketers, spending only 36% of their week on core tasks versus 46% for their counterparts. This discrepancy is attributed to increased time spent on emails, meetings, and administrative duties, leading many marketers to log in early, work on weekends, and forgo breaks to manage their workloads. To address this issue, marketing managers should seek to reduce the time spent on non-essential tasks to allow marketers to focus on their main responsibilities.

1. Marketers Out of Time?
What’s happening to marketers’ time, how
they’re coping, and how they can get it
back

2. Introduction
Earlier Workfront surveys have found that marketers almost never feel like they have
enough time to get through their burgeoning workloads. Our new State of Marketing
Work Report confirms that marketers, on average, have less time than their
colleagues to get stuff done. But why? Read on for 7 findings that shed light on this
mystery…

3. Finding #1: Marketers really do have less time for their primary job duties than non-
marketers.

4. We asked marketers and non-marketers what percentage of their work week was taken up by
their primary job duties.
Non-marketers spend 46% of their week on primary job duties
But marketers have only 36% of their week for primary job duties

5. But why is this happening?

6. Finding #2: Marketers spend more time in email, meetings, and administrative tasks.

7. We asked marketers and non-marketers what percentage of their week as taken up by
other work activities.

8. Marketers spend 8% more time in email and meetings than non-marketers

9. So how do marketers cope with this lack of time for real work?

10. Finding #3: Marketers log in before and after hours.

11. We asked marketers how often they log in to work or work email before or after standard
business hours, either in the office or remotely.
89% confess to logging in outside of standard hours
56% do it every day

12. Finding #4: Marketers log in on weekends.

13. We also asked marketers how often they log in to work or work email on weekends.
85% log in on weekends
52% do this every weekend

14. Finding #5: Marketers take shorter lunch breaks.

15. 50% of marketers take lunch breaks of 30 minutes or less

16. And as if that weren’t enough…

17. Finding #6: Marketers delay bathroom breaks to get more time to work.

18. We asked marketers: “How many times in the last week have you delayed going to the
restroom to meet a deadline?”
60% confess to “holding it” to get work done
30% do this 4 or more times per week

19. So why all these extra hours?

20. Finding #7: Marketers work overtime to catch up and get ahead of their work.

21. We asked marketers why they work outside standard business hours.
52% “To get ahead of my work”
37% “Too much work to do”
32% “It is expected at my company”
17% “To look more dedicated than my colleagues”

22. Conclusion
Email, meetings, and administrative tasks are absorbing so much of marketers’ time that
they must resort to overtime and other tactics to keep up with their primary job duties.
Given the dangers of reporting routinely to overtime, marketing managers would do well to
find solutions that shrink the amount of time spent in email, meetings, and other
administrative tasks and give marketers back more time for the work they were hired to do.
Click here to read the full 2015 State of Marketing Work Report.